Gina's is my favourite coffee shop. You can forget the franchises, this one is well-run and they actually deliver coffee to your table. The chairs are leather club chairs, the music is soft and calming and you can sit and read a book or paper or work on your laptop without being made to feel like you're a pain in the arse.
"Jake knows."
Valerie, who was sitting opposite me, looked great in a deep brown leather skirt and beige cashmere sweater, her thick, chestnut hair a little wild over her shoulders.
"What does he know?" I couldn't stop looking at the chestnut-brown shoe that dangled from her foot. It had a heel that made my nipples hard. Her long, beautiful shaped legs were crossed and I couldn't see the other shoe of the pair. It was an inspiring sight nonetheless.
"For fuck's sake, Cath" she hissed, "about us."
'"Be specific."
"He saw us at the fireworks party." Valerie, Val, is beautiful and incredibly talented. She's also tall, slim and happily married. Except when she isn't, happily married that is.
~
I first met her at a press conference she spoke at and at which she represented the Council Leader's office. It was a shitty conference because they were pretending to have listened to the views off the electorate regarding (and opposing) Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) when, in fact, the leader was determined to push them through and, I suspected, had even massaged the figures to suggest support was stronger than in fact it was.
Val was by far the most convincing speaker and, after the lie-fest was over I'd hung around hoping to get her alone. I had, and we talked briefly. I had offered to buy her coffee because, I said, I'd like to get the truth; not for publication but to educate me. She'd refused saying she had to get back to work so I gave her my card and said I'd like to talk to her, off the record, sometime.
"Maybe." With that she'd hurried away and I'd thought, oh well, maybe is better than 'fuck off.' Her call a couple of days later was most welcome and we met at Gina's. And, God, did she look good? Those legs were covered by well cut, high-waisted trousers, dark blue and with pleated front. The blouse beneath her cream blazer was grey and, I guessed, silk with a mandarin collar. That chestnut hair, wild and untamed as it was contrasted beautifully with the cream jacket. She had fine cheek bones and a tiny amount of eye makeup. Around her neck was a thin, gold chain. A gold ring on her wedding finger was the only disappointment.
I got the impression she was nervous at first. "We're not supposed to speak to the press. The press office does that."
"I just want to understand why, if the public living in the proposed LTNs are so strongly opposed to them, why is the Mayor's office pressing ahead with them?"
As if to a child, Val explained. I learned the more I got to know her that this was her natural way, almost as if she was explaining herself to herself as well as me.
"There are two bye-elections coming up." I nodded. "We, the leaders' staff believe his party will lose them, and if that's true, his majority is gone.. You promise not to print any of this?" I assured her I'd only print with her consent. "So, Ridley," the leader, "has done a deal with the Green Party. If they promise to maintain his majority no matter what the outcome of the elections might be, he'll guarantee the LTNs which are their big policy issue."
"So he cant fail to deliver and stay in power?"
"That's the threat. Personally, I think the Greens would support him anyway because otherwise they'd lose all influence and they are just as power hungry as all the rest."
We talked a lot more and then she said, suddenly, "Catherine, I'd really like a gin and tonic. Care to join me?"
We walked to a pub quite close by and I ordered. We sat at a table away from the bar and talked more. We talked about her marriage which was to Jake, a primary schoolteacher with an absence of ambition but who was great with their two children. We talked about my life, single, gay, more ambitious than her husband but determined not to leave our lovely city.
She reached across the table and pushed my hair behind my earner finger lingering. "You look better with your eyes more visible." A small frisson of excitement passed through me. Moving someone's hair like that is an incredible invasion of personal space; an intimacy.
"Do you fancy a drink at my place?" She nodded. I was pretty sure we both knew what I meant.
In the Uber, I saw her fiddling with her wedding ring, trying to take it off. "Leave it, it's who you are." Her hand dropped away and rested on my thigh. I turned a little and kissed her ear. She sighed. We arrived at my flat and there was no pretence of wanting more to drink. We kissed, hard, the minute I'd closed the door. I had to bend my neck back because she was at least four inches taller than I and her shoes had at least three inch heels where mine were trainers beneath my black jeans. I had a thick sweater on and her hands went under it and I felt her nails on my skin. I pressed into her and she bit my lower lip gently, pulling it away from my teeth a bit.
"Where's your bed?"
I led her to it and we stripped each other. We took our time, and, as each new bit of skin was revealed our lips touched it. Her jacket fell to the floor. I undid her blouse and found, delighted, that her breasts were bare so I bent to her nipples and kissed them, my hands on her back under the open blouse. I did the shoe dance, one shoe front holding the heel of the other as I slipped my foot out, then repeated. She kicked her shoes off. She heaved my jumper over my head, undid my bra and tackled my nipples.
"Fuck it," she said and, stepping back, undid her trousers and slipped them off, taking her panties with them. So I did the same until I was standing naked but for a par of white socks and we tumbled onto the bed. It wasn't slow, we devoured each other. She was prone on the bed and I lay beside her, our mouths joined and our hands exploring. I loved the gasp she gave when my fingers closed tightly, but not too tightly, around her nipple. My turn to gasp came when her hand moved between my legs, which spread invitingly so she could find my cunt. If anything it got more intense. She went down on me and licked me, her tongue pushing and caressing and I gripped that beautiful mane of hair, not too tightly, and wallowed in the sensations.
I cant tell you the exact order of things. I found myself between her legs, her knees raised and my mouth firmly on her, opening her, tasting her. Then we were mouth to mouth again, each of us with a hand between the other's legs and working into each other. I found myself on my front with her hair on my back and her tongue on my spine, down and down until she lifted my hips and licked my cunt from behind.
I wrestled myself on top and thrust my thigh between hers, clutching her face in both hands and kissing her as she pressed against my thigh. Her face was a picture of ecstasy as her orgasm came. She was almost silent until the peak, when she gave along, extended guttural exclamation, her eyes closed, her mouth wide.
My own climax came when she fingered me, her thumb on my clit and she kissed me. I'm usually noisy and this was no exception. My body stiffened and I arched as the fire passed through me. As so often with a great orgasm, I lay silent after, my eyes shut. I felt her body on top of me, her lips on my face.
"Noisy cow!" We both laughed.
That had been in Spring and over the next few months we met quite frequently, she told me things but I was ultra-careful to write up anything she told me in a way that ensured nobody could pin it on her. We fucked a few times too.
~
And now here we were in Gina's again, but Val was clearly worried.
"So what has he said to you?"
"He hasn't said anything, well, not to me."
"So how do you know he saw us?"
"His sister, Betty told me. That's how I met him. I was at University with his sister."
"Did you?"
"With Betty? No, no we were just mates. We still are but she is fucking angry with me."
